Tender
by JayBee-Bug
Summary: Spike POV, mostly some deep musings about the Slayer.


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Title: Tender

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Author: JayBee

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Rating: PG-13 (few mentions of adult situations)

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Category: Spike POV, deep musings

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Setting/Spoilers: No episodes in particular, vague mention of the situation in S4.

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Summary: "Vampires can't feel the cold. Or at least, that's what they tell me."

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Feedback: You know I can't sleep without it: jaybee_bug@yahoo.com

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Distribution Statement: Always welcomed, just keep my name & e-mail attached

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Disclaimer: Spike created by Joss Whedon. Brought to life by James Marsters. And owned by a bunch of people in business suits. :)

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Oh I am what I am   
I'll do what I want   
But I can't hide   
I won't go   
I won't sleep   
I can't breathe   
Until you're resting here with me   
I won't leave   
I can't hide   
I cannot be   
Until you're resting here with me _– Dido, "Here With Me"_  
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I'm having the dream again. 

Oh, I've dreamed of her; of course I have. There have been many dreams. Enough to fill lifetimes of memories. They flood my unconscious mind each night, when I am helpless to their power over me; and I slip away, allowing them to take complete control, directing my every thought, my every feeling, my every desire and need. 

And each night I wake up with that same taste of bitterness in my mouth, that same flutter of dread upon realizing I am now in the real world once more. I shiver, almost as if cold, but that is, of course, impossible. 

Vampires can't feel the cold. 

Or at least, that's what they tell me. 

I pace my crypt each night, desperate to clasp my mind away from the dreams, from the painful sting of my mind, of the raw need that shall never be relinquished. It hurts like an open wound, the air burning acidicly, like that wretched blessed water has been tossed onto my brain and now rolls and swirls around in there with no way of escape. And even as I endure this night after night, as impossible as it sounds, the pounding agony within my skull _never dulls. _It remains as sharp and acute as the day it was borne in there. I feel helpless against the tide of my own emotions. 

But they aren't really emotions, are they? That is what everyone keeps telling me. I can't really feel. Not the way people do, at least. It's animal. Passion. Pain. Anger. Fear. Simple feelings in their purest forums-hormonal reactions the brain has. It's not really _emotion_-there is no intelligence involved. I cannot feel compassion, nor tenderness, nor any of the things that separate humans from beasts with sticks and stones. 

And I believe that-or at least, I used to. I embraced it. I reveled in it. I lavished every second of my existence of Demon; thinking it was the only way to really live. It was such a freedom from the boundaries that had been placed upon me, that others had placed upon me. I was capable of so much more. 

Even when I was neutered; t'ch! I still kept with my old ways. I was still Demon. Vampire. Evil. 

So simple. Purely black and white. I miss that. I really do. 

If I could change things, so this never happened; well, God. So much went wrong. I don't even know were to begin. This was just one thing after another on a path of downward-spiraling destruction. 

And I can't get her out of my mind. I can't escape it anymore if I tried to. 

But to stack on top of this entire wonderful unlife of mine, perhaps a cherry on top of somebody's twisted and warped idea of a sundae dessert, is something that is starting to disturb me on a deeper level. It's not really getting more painful as time passes; it never eases, either; but it is changing, somehow, and it bothers me. 

And it's almost starting to scare me. 

I know, I know. William the Bloody, scared of his own bloody self. Goes to show how screwed up I really am. How much she screwed me up like this. 

Because lately, the dreams have been different. They're changing. 

Before, they were blidningly passionate, erotica for my mind. At first I savored them, would lie in bed each dusk and recapture each detail, mull it over in my mind like I was tasting blood on my tongue, wanting to suck every last bit of energy I could from each colorful fantasy. 

The novelty of them soon wore off, however, and they kept getting longer and grittier, until like a drug addict desperate for getting another jump off of it, it just kept getting harder and harder to satisfy. 

They stopped becoming a blessing and more of a cursing with each day, until I dread the time I had to sleep, knowing that they were waiting there for me. Haunting me. 

But now they're not even like that anymore. Something inside me has shifted; I know it instinctively, deep in my bone marrow, running through the blood that lies stagnant in my dead veins. Something is definitely off. 

It scared the Hell out of me the first time it happened; I awoke in a cold sweat and couldn't shake the memories from me for quite some time. 

It hadn't been me and the Slayer, pressed together in a fit of violent passion, or of me assaulting the petite girl and drinking from her; or even her just kicking my arse across the block which is so much closer to the painful reality of things. No, no, this one had been alarmingly different, a stark contrast. 

We had been walking together, side by side, hand-in-hand. Our fingers had been entwined and I held on lightly to her, almost gentle. She gazed at me with such soft, understanding eyes, and I looked back with a similar expression. 

Why? Why do they keep coming, these dreams? Each night like a plague for my mind, they have been infiltrating my usual parade of mental slide shows, to replace with these bizarre situations. Seemingly random occurrences at times. 

Sitting together on a bench outside. 

Talking in her room, our voices low and soft to not wake her sister or her mum. 

Together at the Bronze, sharing a drink. 

And the lovemaking; even that has been influenced by these oddities. It's changing, too. It's getting softer, mellowed like shades of pastels…bloody Hell, I'm going all poetic here. What has gotten into me? I am overcome by a feeling of tranquillity and peacefulness when I awake from those dreams that makes me want to wretch. I'm a _vampire_, I'm not supposed to feel these things. It's as simple as that. _Not_ supposed to. 

And yet, I'd swear upon every fiber in my being, upon my own undead heart that I am, indeed, feeling them. There's just no way to deny the fact. 

So then, I return to my question of _why? _

And how do I make it stop? 

I doubt there is anyway to stop them; to attempt to do so would be like an ant standing up against a torrent. But I cannot allow this to eat me away like a vampiric cancer; my natural urge is to fight, to battle off that which has consumed me bit by bit, eating away more of myself each day, and leaving behind this haunted person I can only describe as William. Not the vampire William. The human; that stupid pillock I once had been so long ago. 

It's almost as if the demon inside is loosing the war, dying in its human shell, and the soulless human is taking his place. If that is true, than I can never agree to go with the flow of things; to do so would be suicide. To live life as a soulless human? What kind of existence could that possibly be? 

Than again, what kind of existence do I have now, anyway? I do not cast shadow nor reflection; the sunlight refuses to grant me as a child of this Earth and exiles me to the darkness; everything and everyone around me refuses to except or believe that I even am real. 

Except for her. The Chosen One. The one who's very existence is only for the purpose of destroying us. She believes. She knows that we exist. 

Maybe we only really exist to her. Maybe that's all that's really granting us an existence at all. In her Eyes we live and we die. In her Eyes we do Evil and roam this Earth. 

There is no doubt a close link between Her and the vampire. It is a kind of link I could never explain to you; a kind of intimacy and mutual dependence upon each other for existence and survival that is not duplicated in natural Nature, that had never been depicted by man's imagination. 

It is simply beyond other's comprehension. 

Perhaps that's why I sought them out for so long. Killing Slayers. It gave me such a rush, it was like nothing I had ever, ever experienced before. It is the ultimate journey to undergo; that connection, it was felt so strongly there. Made me felt more alive than when I was breathing. 

And now it is the Slayer that will ultimately bring me back down to the former being I once was. Converting me back into a simple-minded, soft-hearted, breakable Human. Like the one She masquerades as herself. 

But she is Slayer. And I am Vampire. 

This, of all things, no matter what is said and done, will never, ever change. 


End file.
